American Jesus Volume 1: Chosen

American Jesus Volume 1: Chosen by Mark Millar and Peter Gross is hysterical, but not quite as outrageous as I thought it was going to be.

At least that was what I thought until I got to the last like three pages.

I’m not going to ruin the surprise.

I’m just going to tell you that you really should run out, buy this and read the fuck out of it.

Ever wonder how many cocks Satan has?

Apparently, it’s 5.

But that’s all I’m saying.

Go read this.

1602

1602 by Neil Gaiman is an intriguing concept.

What if there were superheroes during the Spanish Inquisition?

Of course, they’re burned, drawn, quartered, beheaded, sodomized, etc.

(sodomized figuratively, not literally)

(I’m not really sure what I mean by that.)

Magneto and some of the X-Men make the transition into historical allegory naturally, but alas, even Neil Gaiman can’t make the Fantastic Four interesting.

Not a bad read, but nothing memorable.

Gimmie an 'S!'

Okay, I read The Comics Go To Hell: A Visual History of the Devil in Comics, which I’m not really sure how to categorize. It goes through the evolution of our perception of Satan as portrayed in comic form. He has chapters exploring several facets of Satan and how he is presented including how he comes into play in the superhero genre, how he is used humorously, how he is used to represent the evil in ourselves and how and why he is used to frighten. He even has a chapter devoted to the endless adaptations of the story of Dr. Faustus. While this is hardly a comprehensive analysis of how our civilization has come to think of the Devil and evil in general, it is a fascinating read and Stromberg even surprised me a few times at just how deep he was willing to go. One of the things that amused me so as I read this was how I was constantly reminded of how intimately I know this subject matter in comparison to the public at large. Anytime he would explain the context of something as far as how it references the Bible or just Christian popular culture, I found myself thinking, “well, duh.” Then I’d remember that most people probably weren’t aware of whatever he pointed out. I was very pleasantly surprised that Stromberg referenced the Chick gospel tracts. These comics scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. The images of Satan in these tracts are far more unsettling than any horror movie I have seen. The Satan that terrorized me the most when I was young, the one that gave me endless nightmares and caused me to accept Jesus into my heart over and over and over just in case I hadn’t done it right the first time was Satan as drawn in the last panel of Somebody Goofed. I still see this as an absolutely paralyzing image.